Title: Dynamic characterisation and mechanical properties of FIB grown nano pillars

Authors: Amit Banerjee; Tarun Mankad; S. Dhamodaran; J. Ramkumar; Vishwas N. Kulkarni

Addresses: Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India ' Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India ' Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India

Abstract: Focused ion beam (FIB) technology is widely used for the fabrication of prototype mechanical/ electromechanical devices in submicron and nano domain. There are not many reports on the dynamic characterisation of the nanomaterials is available in the literature. Very little is known about the changes in the mechanical properties which occur at nano dimensions. In addition to that, as the FIB grown nanomaterials are inherently contaminated by the incident beam and hence their properties deviate from the bulk, it is immensely important to characterise their mechanical behaviour. In this paper we present the measurement of Young's modulus of FIB grown C, Pt, W nano materials using vibrating nano pillars in their first resonance mode. The reasonably large 'Q-factor' of the pillars favours a high precision measurement. The percentages of the different constituents present in a typical FIB-CVD grown nano pillar of C, Pt, W are also determined by the energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) method. The spring constant for individual pillars has been estimated. The application of the nano pillars in attogram mass sensing process has also been demonstrated.

Keywords: focused ion beam; FIB technology; mechanical properties; nanomaterials; vibrating nanopillars; attogram mass sensing; nanotechnology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNT.2012.049459

International Journal of Nanotechnology, 2012 Vol.9 No.10/11/12, pp.972 - 981

Published online: 04 Oct 2012 *

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